A Cougar Attacks in the Salmon Hatchery
A hungry cougar terrorizes a local salmon hatchery, leading to a desperate defensive battle involving dogs and a rifle.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Ilwaco, Wash., Oct. 23.—Dan Markham, superintendent of the Lebam salmon hatchery, tells of a fierce fight between a dog and a hungry cougar. 'High' Markham and another employe had been catching fish at the dam during the forenoon, and when they returned at noon, Sol Markham's dog accompanied them. The dog was prowling about the brush when the cougar attacked it. The boys heard the dog howling and ran to see what the commotion meant. In the middle of the road the cougar had the dog down on its back. They went back to the dam to secure a gun. On the road he met Ed Kirsch with a rifle. Kirsch ran to the assistance of the dog, but the dog had gotten away and ran back to the dam. Kirsch had his own dog with him and went to the scene of the battle. The cougar attacked his dog also. Kirsch fired three shots at the approaching animal, the last one breaking its under jaw. Disabled, it was chased up a tree by the dogs and killed. The cougar was a large, old female, driven from the hills by hunger; she had been lying in wait to attack anything that came in sight.
“The animal was so hungry that it is thought had a person passed the road while it was lying in wait it would have tackled them.”
This account highlights the raw proximity of the wilderness to early Washington industries. While the specific species-human interactions have shifted, the tension between human enterprise and local predator populations remains a staple of life in rural Washington.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.